“That is so. I believe that you’d better go and waken Paulina. I’m going on, but I may get caught somewhere, so you can tear the house down looking for me.”
Nell hesitated. “Go on, Nell,—it is the only sensible thing to do.”
Jannet was not particularly sorry, it must be admitted, to have the adventure by herself. She was not afraid now, for the ghost did not want her identity known. Why hadn’t she told Nell to have Paulina take up the hunt with her? Perhaps Nell would think of it.
The sliding door here was easily found, though one not looking for it might not have thought of it, and might have concluded that the ladder was the way of a fugitive. Like part of a double door, a portion slid aside, for the apparent nail operated a spring. The opening was not large. Jannet stooped to enter where a musty smell met her, as well as a familiar scent of some sort of perfume.
Here was an odd little cubby to be sure, but the ghost had gone on. Jannet received an impression of a box of a room with a long shelf or berth running its length and something like a table in front of it. On this lay a thin scarf and a filmy dress with yards of material lying in a mass. The ghost had left her costume, then. Oh, if she could only catch her! Yet Jannet’s purpose did not include touching her.
Ahead was an opening, and Jannet had need to be careful of her steps, as she swung her light around the opening before her—to find stairs again! Oh, here was where the ghost had come down, in the wall of her room by the big chimney! It was a circular stairway, built in an unbelievably small space.
But Jannet was light and quick. In a moment she was at the bottom. Up and down before her again she swept the light. Good. There was a spring in plain sight. Now she knew how it was done, but she left the panel wide open behind her as she entered her own room, put on the electricity, and took the precaution to look hurriedly into her bathroom, into her closet and under her bed before she opened her door and dashed into the hall.
Jannet felt that she was too late, but she flew across the corridor which led into the new part and down the hall there to the room at the end where Hepsy and Vittoria slept. No light showed under the door. All was quiet.
Ordinarily Jannet was too considerate to waken any one in the middle of the night. But this time she thought that she had suffered inconvenience enough to be excused, even if she wakened the wrong people. Firmly she rapped upon the door. At first there was no response. Jannet rapped again, though much inclined to give it up, now that she had time to think. Perhaps neither of the girls did this. Could it be Paulina after all?
But while Jannet was wondering whether to knock again or not, the light went on and the door opened. There stood Hepsy in her long white gown, her short hair done up in curlers almost like those of a fashion long gone by. This was how Hepsy achieved that remarkable effect, then.